March, 1869.
I AM holding on to every moment of my full happy life, for this is to be our last year in Charleston. Mamma has applied for her dower, and when it is assigned her, we will move into the country, as Charlie is to graduate this spring at the college, and Jinty’s education is complete, and Mamma prefers the country where Charlie can make a living by planting rice. Every one is happy over it but me; I cannot bear the thought of giving up my full life; but I try not to think about it until it comes, but to enjoy the present without alloy. Anyway we would have to give up this beautiful house for the creditors of the estate want to sell it.
I have so many delightful friends; one specially who has actually taught me to love poetry, by his persistence in reading it to me. I do believe I have always liked it in my heart, for among my most cherished books from the time I was fourteen are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales given me by my first hero Cousin Johnston Pettigrew, and a{341} little fat leather-bound copy of Homer’s Iliad, I never moved without these two. Then I liked Evangeline, and Hiawatha, but I never could get up any enthusiasm for The Lady of the Lake, so I had got into the habit of saying with a certain pride that I did not like poetry.
April. Every Friday evening Mr. Sass comes and we read Italian together, which is delightful. I have studied a little alone, and when I was about thirteen, to every one’s great amusement, I used to take an hour’s lesson in the afternoon, once a week, from M. Pose. I have always loved languages and Italian is especially beautiful, and in singing it is such a help to know it. Now we are reading Goldoni’s plays, and the Italian is so simple, it is very easy to read, very different from the Jerusalem, which we read first. My mind is so eager for knowledge, it is positively uncanny, it springs forward so to meet things, I fear me it is more than usually true of me that “Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.”
I need ballast so much, if I had only had a man’s education. A good course of mathematics under a severe master would help me greatly, and I need help.
The only form of amusement that the young{342} men could afford was boating, and soon after we began the school, Charlie sent to the plantation and got Brother to send down to him one of the rowboats. Rainbow, the pride of the plantation, had been lent to the Confederate Government, for use on the fortifications and we never got her back, but Brother sent the next best and it was a fine rowboat. Charlie named it the Countess, and he and his friends had great pleasure in her; Tom Frost, Arthur Mazyck, William Jervey, James Lesesne and himself were the crew, and they invited their girl friends to the most delightful moonlight rows. They went on long fishing trips on Saturdays and all their holidays, coming back happy but their faces pealing from sunburn. The exercise kept them in good health and spirits.
May, 1869. Things are moving on rapidly. When Mamma applied for her dower, she said she would take a sixth of the real estate in fee simple, instead of a third for life only; she has received information that the creditors appointed a board of Appraisers, to value the property and decide, and after careful valuation they have decided that the plantation, Chicora Wood, where she has always lived will constitute a sixth of the land in value, and have awarded her that. It is too delightful!{343} and she is so happy, and we are all so happy, for the idea of giving up Chicora was dreadful, and we feared they would think it too valuable for a sixth. It has all to be repaired as the house is all torn to pieces, but Mamma has been so wonderful that she has invested more than a thousand dollars every year of the school, and she has begged Brother to engage carpenters and begin the restoration of the house and out-buildings at once, so that it will be ready for us next winter. I only wish my heart was not so heavy about going.
The packing up of all our belongings was a tremendous business, but in this as in everything else Charley was most efficient, and he did it with a good heart, as it was the greatest happiness to him that we were moving back to Chicora, and that he was going to plant the place. Jinty was also perfectly happy, the thought of being able to live on horseback once more filled her with joy. I, only, was downhearted; to me human nature had become more interesting than plain nature, and people more fascinating than plants. So I determined to apply for a place as music-teacher in the town of union, S. C., which had been held by a very charming friend of mine who played beautifully, Caro Ravenel. The family did not ap{344}prove of my doing this as mamma thought I needed rest; anyway, we were to go to the pineland for the summer and I would not have to leave for union until the autumn.
I remember well the last Sunday we were to be in Charleston; during the service I was so moved that I had to put down my heavy veil to conceal my tears!
Just at this time a most wonderful thing happened: mamma got a letter from our cousin, John Earl Allston, of Brooklyn, N. Y., saying:
“My ............